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Comment by tailspin2019 | Hacker News Reader

tailspin2019·

> If npm had paid plans that would essentially mop up larger corporations they could then auto-distribute funds Spotify style based on “number of listens”.

This seems like a pretty decent idea…

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Until there's enough money in the pot that making your packages seem very important happens to be a productive use of one's time. At that point, you have to start dealing with fake downloads, dependencies added for no reason to somewhat more popular packages that aren't paying much attention... and suddenly you need to take money from the pool to pay for your fraud prevention team.

Perhaps download's value could be weighted by associated domains? For example if Apple.com is relying on it the author will get paid more than random.example

Except the Spotify model is also rife with issues. Artists generally hate Spotify and hardly make a living off of “pay per stream”. Most of them still very much depend on tours, merch, and, at the higher level, brand deals to make any money off of their craft.

Spotify isn't a replacement for tours. It's a replacement for cds and/or radio, both of which make artists similar amounts of miniscule amounts of money.

For programmers, you'd be correct. That only really be a replacement for patreons, tips, and donations, which would typically be a miniscule amount. It just redistribute it instead. (Your $x subscription just automatically gets allotted instead of manually allotted).

Or they could just pay people to develop and maintain a batteries included standard library and just throw away 99% of packages.

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